


It Was Then That I Carried You

by bffimagine



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 19:44:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14838011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bffimagine/pseuds/bffimagine
Summary: The first time Keith carried Lance on his back, it’s because Lance did some crazy ninja shit by jumping off God-knows-where up on the high-arched ceiling of the training deck, snapped the Gladiator’s neck between his ankles, and twirled off its shoulders just as it began to collapse. Next thing Keith knew, he had long, wiry limbs around his neck and his waist and he was severely unbalanced with the additional weight. He stumbled backward a few paces before he was able to get his feet underneath him and one hand under Lance’s–-“HEY! At least buy me dinner first, jeez!”-----Five times Keith carried Lance on his back, and one time Lance returned the favour (and ended up kindasorta asking him out on a date).





	It Was Then That I Carried You

The first time Keith carried Lance on his back, it’s because Lance did some crazy ninja shit by jumping off God-knows-where up on the high-arched ceiling of the training deck, snapped the Gladiator’s neck between his ankles, and twirled off its shoulders just as it began to collapse. Next thing Keith knew, he had long, wiry limbs around his neck and his waist and he was severely unbalanced with the additional weight. He stumbled backward a few paces before he was able to get his feet underneath him and one hand under Lance’s–

“HEY! At least buy me dinner first, jeez!”

Keith rolled his eyes. “I could say the same to you. Why the hell did you jump on me?”

Pidge walked by at some point and peered through the doorway. Lance and Keith were oblivious to her presence, continuing to bicker as Keith turned around himself like a dog chasing its tail because he couldn’t make proper eye contact with Lance as they shouted at each other. However, throughout the argument, Keith kept a firm grip under Lance’s thighs to make sure he wouldn’t fall.

She pretended she had never been there. She felt like two IQ points were stolen from her for just witnessing that level of idiocy.

* * *

The second time was when Lance caught Keith reading some transmission from the Blade on one of the ship’s magic tablet thingies, posture tense and rigid in one of the seats of the control room. His dark brows were drawn together and his lips were set so tight together they were bloodless.

Lance frowned and took the only logical course of action–he crept up behind the former red-slash-black paladin and threw his arms around his neck from behind.

Keith, of course,  _completely_  flipped out. Which Lance had totally not been expecting, because really, had anyone ever been able to sneak up on Keith Kogane? Apparently Keith’s guard had been down for once in his entire life and the shorter boy shot up to his feet lightning-fast, the tablet falling to the ground with a sharp clatter. Lance had to tuck his head into the sharp jut of Keith’s shoulderblade to avoid the elbow that was aimed for where his face had been.

“Whoa!” he said, stabilizing his weight on Keith’s back by hooking his ankles together around the other boy’s hips. “Cool it, buddy, it’s just me!”

When Keith stood up, he was just tall enough that Lance could perch his butt on the edge of the seat’s backrest.

Well, so much for trying to lighten Keith’s mood.

“Lance? What the hell are you doing?”

As soon as Keith recognized his fellow paladin on his back, his hands curled around the backs of Lance’s knees to anchor him there. It happened so quickly it was like he didn’t even think about it.

“I thought you could use some company,” Lance said with an impish grin, nudging his cheek against Keith’s.

Keith just looked even more confused.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “You grabbed me from behind.”

“I didn’t  _grab_  you, you heathen,” Lance sighed. “This is an aggressive form of affection called the back-hug.”

“Why did you feel the need to–”

“Just shut up and carry me to the kitchen, I’m starving.”

* * *

The third time happened while they were all sitting on the floor of the common room trying to piece together a strategy to free a captive planet with whatever intel they had from the rebel forces. Keith was stretched out on his stomach so he could plot out the positions of some of the Blade’s stealth pods on the massive map Pidge was able to project onto the floor. He was in full Marmora uniform except for his mask.

Lance frowned. Hunk was typing something at the speed of light while Pidge read over his shoulder and she would nod every few seconds. Allura was off to the side with Shiro and Coran discussing something in harsh, quiet whispers that only carried enough for him to pick out a few words here and there. 

It was tense, but it was also boring.

He sidled up to Keith and stood over him with one foot on either side of Keith’s hips, leaning forward to peer at the little x’s denoting the Blade’s ships.

“Uh, can I help you?” Keith asked, hand paused over his last little x. Lance cleared his throat and dropped down so he was in a low crouch, half his weight on his feet and the rest of it sitting on Keith’s lower back.

Keith yelped in a truly undignified manner.

“Lance!”

“You’re the only one sitting by yourself over here, Keith,” Lance said by way of explanation.

“So? I don’t see why you’d sit on me!”

“Relax, I’m just making sure you don’t get lonely.”

“What are you–hey! Don’t touch my hair! What–argh!”

Lance cackled as Keith bucked under his weight, only for his eyes to widen in surprise the next moment as Keith managed to get to his hands and knees and then stand up. Lance nearly toppled backward but Keith grabbed his legs and Lance grabbed Keith’s shoulders at the last moment.

“Hey! Trying to kill me is so uncalled for, asshole!”

“You–you sat on me!”

They threw insults and jibes back and forth until they were laughing and Keith’s arms were shaking and eventually he set Lance down. Lance watched the light dance in Keith’s eyes for a few more moments before the laughter faded and Allura shouted, “Paladins! Now is  _not_  the time for childish lollygagging!”

When Lance shot Keith another look from the corner of his eye, Keith’s mouth was again set in that white, firm line.

He sighed and figured he should help Hunk and Pidge with whatever the heck they were doing.

* * *

The fourth time Lance had been asleep. They were all dead tired after what had started out as a recon mission that ended up being a fight for their lives against fleet after fleet of Galra warships. They had to call in as much back-up as the Blade of Marmora and other rebel forces could spare, and even then there were more casualties than they could afford. Fortunately, the paladins were all in one piece, bumped and bruised but otherwise unscathed; the Blade and the rebels had lost many of their comrades.

Allura and Shiro extended their sincere condolences to Kolivan on behalf of team Voltron. Keith stood behind Shiro like a shadow, his mask still active and hood up. Lance slumped into Red’s pilot seat, grief and weariness set heavy and aching in his bones.

Next thing he remembered was opening his eyes and feeling like his eyelids were made of lead and sandpaper. His face was pressed against soft dark hair that smelled like the sea, which never did make sense to him since Keith lived in the desert for over a year, and there was no sea in space.

“Keith?” he murmured, still mostly unconscious.

“Hey, it’s okay. Go back to sleep.” Keith’s voice was soft and oddly soothing. Lance closed his eyes and decided to obey. There was no fight left in him tonight, and he allowed himself to succumb to the overwhelming desire to sleep.

When he woke up the next morning, Keith was gone.

* * *

The fifth time was the worst. Lance knew before he heard the sickening crack that his leg was broken–snapped like a twig with a flick of Haggar’s emaciated, knobbly wrist. She threw him across the room with barely more than a thought, and he screamed as he made impact with the wall. It wrenched his leg into a position it was never meant to be in, jagged edges of bone grinding against each other as he flopped onto the ground.

The tears slipped down his cheeks and it was all he could do to keep forcing himself to breathe past the black spots in his vision.

There was a howl from somewhere before a deafening clang of metal against… something, and Lance blinked the stinging sweat (or was it blood?) out of his eyes to try to focus on what was going on. Keith’s luxite blade was braced in front of him as he fluidly dove and twisted out of the way while Haggar sent bolts of black-purple lightning at him. Somehow Keith managed to dodge an impossibly close strike and slashed his sword toward Haggar’s neck, only for her to block the blow with her spindly hands. A line of blood splashed onto the ground from where Keith was able to land his strike to her forearms.

She screeched horribly and disappeared in a flash of purple light.

“Keith?” Lance wheezed out. He craned his neck to watch Keith start running toward him. His heart caught in his throat as Keith’s knees buckled and he fell hard to his hands and knees.

The former red paladin coughed harshly, a thick mouthful of blood making a sickening sound as it splattered between his shaking hands. When he looked up to meet Lance’s eyes, his face was pale but his eyes were blazing. He pushed himself to his feet and unsteadily closed the last of the distance between them.

“This is gonna hurt,” the older boy warned, sounding breathless. Lance opened his mouth to say–

All coherent thought fled his mind as the blinding pain chased it out. Lance didn’t even realize the screaming he heard was coming from him until Keith put the hilt of his Marmora blade into his mouth and he gratefully clenched his teeth around it, muffling the rest of his agony as Keith maneuvered him onto his back.

“I know this isn’t ideal,” Keith huffed, taking a short pause between every word to catch his breath. “I don’t think I can carry you any other way right now.”

Lance felt lightheaded from the pain and probably from bleeding a significant amount into the fracture. He reached up and pulled the knife out of his mouth with trembling fingers.

“You’re not gonna make it out like this,” he panted into Keith’s ear.

“We’re just gonna have to make due,” Keith grunted, gritting his teeth.

“No, Keith, you can’t. You can’t get us both out of here in time.”

“Shut up, Lance.”

“Listen, buddy, it’ll be fine. Leave me here and get to–”

“Shut up and  _trust me_ , Lance!”

Lance’s jaw clicked shut.

Somehow, against literally all the odds in the universe, Keith managed to avoid the sentries crawling all over Zarkon’s ship and slip out of one of the airlocks. He closed Lance’s visor to seal his helmet and activated his own mask. Red, as if summoned, was ready to receive them. They tumbled into her cockpit in a graceless heap.

Lance nearly blacked out from the searing pain from his leg, but what made him want to vomit was the bloody smear that Keith left in his wake as he slid across the floor and eventually rolled to a stop when he hit the base of the pilot seat.

“That was crazy even for  _you_ , Kogane,” he muttered, trying to ignore the way his voice shook.

Keith didn’t respond. He remained eerily motionless.

“Keith? C’mon, man, say something.”

Red was making a beeline for the castle. She was projecting a sense of wrongness and urgency that pushed the bile up Lance’s throat. She was panicking.

“Please get us back, Red.”

Red was already on it, but he squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead against the floor anyway, praying that she would make it in time. He took a breath and steeled himself before he clawed his way toward Keith, dragging his useless leg behind him and resolutely ignoring the urge to curl up and cry.

“Don’t you dare die on me, Kogane,” he said hoarsely, vision too blurry from pain or tears or adrenaline for him to see much other than the shadowed outline of Keith’s crumpled form. Everything looked so wobbly he had no idea if the other boy was breathing.

In his head, Red was crying.

Lance’s fingers slipped against the smooth flooring, a clammy mix of sweat and blood slick against the tiles. He stretched his arm out as far as it would go and curled his fist into the loose fabric of Keith’s hood.

“Don’t you dare die on me,” he breathed. That was the last thing he remembered.

* * *

When Lance carried Keith, it was after three sleepless quintants staring at the other boy’s impossibly still face in the healing pod. Somehow Red had managed to crash into the hangar and spit the two of them out so Coran and Matt could shove them into the healing pods before they exsanguinated. Bless her giant space cat soul.

The half-Galra flopped out of the pod in an uncharacteristically graceless fashion, like his entire lower half was completely numb. Lance caught him and swiveled to pull him up on his back, the smaller boy’s arms hanging loosely over his shoulders and Lance’s arms bracing his weight under his thighs.

“Your leg,” Keith mumbled into Lance’s jawline.

“It’s fine now,” Lance said gently.

“Oh.” Keith let out a quiet huff and his whole body melted along the line of Lance’s spine. Lance shifted the other boy’s weight slightly to accommodate.

“Alright, Samurai, let’s get you to bed.”

Keith muttered something incoherent, mouth smushed between Lance’s collarbone and the slope of his neck.

“What was that?”

He could feel Keith’s lips curl into a small smirk against his skin.

“I said, ‘Buy me dinner first’.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “As long as its a date, I’m in.”

Keith was quiet for so long that Lance thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he heard a soft, “Anything you want, Sharpshooter.”

He smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> To be completely honest I just wanted to write about Keith giving Lance a piggy-back ride because of how cute it'd be with all those unwieldy gangly limbs everywhere but then it's me so the angst happened whoops. I just thought it'd also be funny that Lance gains zero height by having Keith carry him around...
> 
> I find writing 5+1 things so fun even if it's really unoriginal.
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://bffimagine.tumblr.com/post/174521836785/let-keith-carry-lance) on my [Tumblr](http://bffimagine.tumblr.com).


End file.
